The Colorado solar industry recorded a solid year with a total of 56 megawatts in installations in 2013, but the profile of what of kinds of projects are built may be changing.

The market is still being driven by residential rooftop systems, which accounted for 28.2 megawatts, according to a solar market report by GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association.

By the fourth quarter, however, 54 percent of the 16.8 megawatts installed were for larger projects, such as solar gardens.

“Colorado is at a crossroads,” said Cory Honeyman, a solar analyst with market research firm GTM Research. “Going forward there is the question of balancing residential rooftop solar, solar gardens and utility-scale projects.”

“The key to rooftop solar will be the incentives offered by Xcel in its Solar*Rewards program,” Honeyman said. Xcel has moved to trim incentives and wants to reduce the net metering credit it gives to owners of rooftop solar units for kilowatt-hours the installations put on the grid.

Overall, Colorado moved up to 10th place in 2013 from 12th in 2012 among the states in total megawatts installed.

Colorado has seen a three-year decline in total megawatts installed – but the drop was strongly influenced by the one-time accounting for the 30-megawatt, utility-scale Alamosa Solar Generating Project.

Among the highlights from the market report:

* More solar has been installed in the U.S. in the last eighteen months than in the 30 years prior
* The U.S. installed 4,751 MW of solar PV in 2013, up 41% over 2012 and nearly fifteen times the amount installed in 2008
* There is now a total of 12.1 GW of PV and 918 MW of CSP operating in the U.S.
* There were 140,000 individual solar installations in the U.S. in 2013, and a total of over 445,000 systems operating today
* The fourth quarter of 2013 was by far the largest quarter ever for PV installations in the U.S., with 2,106 MW energized, up 60% over the second-largest quarter (Q4 2012)
* The market value of all PV installations completed in 2013 was $13.7 billion